[JDEV] Best way to drive Jabber adoption?

[Tijl Houtbeckers]

Timothy Carpenter <timbeau_hk at yahoo.co.uk> wrote on 14-6-2003 23:05:12:
> 
>An option could be to target ISPs so they can provide a multi-transport
>service to their customers.
>

That's a good example of a localised portal. But it will be hard to 
offer serverside tranports for an ISP. Apart from the instability, they 
make themselves a target for blocks and maybe even legal action from 
AOL. On top of that they'll have to put up with question from users 
about why the groupchat/filetransfer/etc. doesn't work. They'd be 
better off I think, hacking GAIM a bit to give it a nice skin with 
their company logo and such. Or some agreement with Trillian to give 
away a version with their skin. 

>Why? ISPs (apart from AOL) have very few vehicles to maintain 
>awareness but a giveaway IM skinned with their branding connected to 
>their servers would be a very useful and sticky feature. The local 
>portal route. 
>
>I am keen to see Jabber as the enabling technology for 
>intercommunication - the next level on the IP stack  as it were - not 
>have it relegated to just another Chat community, which is what client-
>side transports imply. 

Before we can compete on features in the consumer-market we'll need a 
sufficient userbase. Multi-protocol clients are a very good way of 
introducing new users to Jabber. In no way does multi-protocol client 
such as Trillian imply that it's "just about the chat". It can 
implement jabber-features just as well as clients that only implement 
jabber as a protocol. What is important, is that new users are brought 
onto the network. Not just for the users that run a multi-protocol 
client (in fact, for them it's less important), but also the users that 
run a client that only does Jabber. 

Once you have a fair slice of the pie, you can compete on features. 
Then it also get's more attractive for both commercial and non-
commercial entities to offer jabber-based services. (For examplee, I 
can imagine one day Trillian will offer Jabber-acounts for a small fee, 
that integrate with the rest of their own communities (forums and 
such)). 

>> Jabber will never "win" in a marketing battle, nor can we use an OS
>> monopoly to force our client on users. But with a mix of good 
>> servers, local portals, and just as critically, decent support for 
>> Jabber in the multi-protocol clients, we can reach a "critical" 
>> mass, where competition will be more on features and possibilities. 
>> And I think we *all* agree that Jabber with it's advantage of being 
>> an open standard that is open for use can have a big lead on the 
>> competion when it comes to that. 
>
>I would say that I have almost all buddies on MSN and Yahoo. All have 
>moved off ICQ (where I too started) and none are on AIM!

Every time you ask this question you'll get a different answer. For me 
it's a small part Jabber, and the rest is 50/50 between ICQ and MSN. I 
do know that once Trillian standard will support Jabber the Jabber part 
will get bigger and the ICQ/MSN part smaller. 

-- 
Tijl Houtbeckers
Software Engineer @ Splendo
The Netherlands